whats more important

[kajunlady]

for a holy pally spell haste or spell crit ( doing an epic upgrade list)

[Rocknlock]

I would think crit since it could save the mana of using another heal, but then again I was only holy spec'd on my pally for a day or two so not totally sure lol

[Nasanna]

I don't think spell haste would be very important for a paladin healer. Spell haste makes your spells cast faster, but paladins are mainly casting Flash of Light, which has a 1.5 second cast time. The global cooldown is 1.5 seconds, so your FOL isn't actually any better. But your Holy Light spell will benefit from spell haste.  You should probably stick with spell crit so your mana lasts longer.

[Grendeel]

Im not a fan of crit healing personally.  If your heal heals for 4k, u typically cast it when the recipient needs 4k worth of health, or less ( some overhealing is normal since bc came out).  Crit healing would just create unnecessary overhealing in this case.  Crit healing is beneficial when your in need of more than what a regular heal would do.   Although this is nice and welcome at times, to rely on it for keeping a tank up, isnt a good idea imo.

Spell haste is much more important.  It allows the heal to land much quicker and gets u ready for the next heal faster.  One could argue that the haste increase would reduce the amount of times your target would get to the point where a crit heal would be helpful.

Im not saying crit healing isnt good, im just saying id take spell haste over crit almost always.

[kajunlady]

soo maybe get some of both in my gear ?

[kaylasb]

I think for Kara, spell crit it's more important than haste, but in raids like ZA spell haste it's better cause the healing stress it's insane, but imo for a holy pally u need to stack +Healing/MP5 as priority

[Nasanna]

I've never played a paladin, but as a healer, I do look at other classes healing styles. Please correct me if I'm saying anything wrong here:

The paladin holy tree has an 11 point talent called Illumination: "After getting a critical effect from your Flash of Light, Holy Light, or Holy Shock heal spell, gives you a 100% chance to gain mana equal to 60% of the base cost of the spell."

There are several other talents in the holy tree that increase your chance to crit with spells. Paladins also have no other way of regenerating mana- they do not benefit from spirit, or have skills like innervate or watershield. So critting with healing spells is basically their form of regenerating mana (in addition to blessing of wisdom and the mp5 on their gear).

In addition, paladins generally cast Flash of Light (1.5 second cast) since it is very mana efficient and Holy Light (2.5 second cast) is not. Since spell haste does not affect the global cooldown (meaning there is always 1.5 seconds between the casting of spells), it doesn't affect the casting time of Flash of Light.

A good article/discussion about spell haste: http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t12882-mechanic_primer_-_haste_-_how_works_what_means/

[kaylasb]

Since the nerf of "Illumination" (100%->60%) the preferred stat its MP5 instead of crit, you are right about the GCD, but in fights like the Lynx boss even if only the cast time is affected, it can save the day. I mean the haste for holy spec it's just situational, in most of the fights you want to have +crit in your gear instead of haste.

[Buzan]

MP5 is the main source for pally mana regen just stack that as high as you can and IMP BOW also helps.

[Grendeel]

Apparently what is required for a paladin varies depending on your healing style and level of gear.

Quote

Stamina: While this offers no direct healing benefits, it does help you survive. If you are dead, you can’t heal.

Intellect: A very undervalued stat, one point gives you 16.5 maximum mana, 0.35 damage and healing, and gives approximately .014% crit.

Spirit: Generally considered a wasted stat on paladins. A significant portion of a paladin’s mana regeneration involves spell casting, and we rarely have the opportunity to stop casting as we generally spam efficient heals, hence we rarely leave the 5SR. Fortunately, our gear tends to not have spirit, so this isn’t an issue.

MP5: The value you place on this stat depends largely what you are trying to accomplish. Further discussion as to the efficiency of this stat will be discussed in the gear section, but for now we will say it is flat mana regeneration, which is never a bad thing.

Spell Crit: Approximately 22 spell critical strike rating is required to gain 1% spell critical strike. This stat scales directly with the amount of mana you are burning…if you are dropping bigger heals this stat will give you more mana back. As such, it is extremely difficult to model against MP5, but if you have approximate percentages from your own heal style (from say, a WWS parse) then you can make an approximate model.

Healing: Scales directly with all healing abilities at a given coefficient. The use of this stat has to be balanced with the others, again further discussion in the gear section.

Haste: To get 1% spell haste, you currently need 15.76 haste rating. Until recently, haste was difficult to quantify and understand outside of a HL build. As a general rule, since the GCD = FoL cast time, haste is a fairly worthless stat for a FoL build. It is KEY for any pally who uses HL a fair amount, however. I believe the fastest HL you can get now with 4pt5 and other haste gear is 1.52s with LG up.

Taken from this site with a detailed analysis of paladin healing

http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t16934-healadin_thread/